Chapter 22
The hardest part wasn't deciding to do it. It was finding Winnie. Fiona crossed the courtyard in the thick gold light of late afternoon, past the fire pit, and past the gazebo. The heat sat on her shoulders the way it had since she'd arrived. There was a promise of fall, but Fiona wasn't seeing it.
Winnie knelt by the bed near the memorial bench, a trowel in one gloved hand.
"Winnie."
Winnie looked up. She didn't ask what was wrong. She just sat back on her heels and waited, the way she always waited, like she had all the time a person could need.
"I want to talk to everyone," Fiona said. "All of them. Tonight, if they'll come. I want to say it out loud, the whole thing, instead of letting it reach people in pieces."
For a moment Winnie didn't answer. She pulled off one glove, finger by finger, and set it on the grass.
"You're sure?" Winnie said it, but it wasn't quite a question.
"No." Fiona almost smiled. "But I'm going to do it anyway."
"Good answer." Winnie reached up. Fiona took her hand and helped her to her feet. "I'll put the word out. Sundown, the courtyard. People will come."
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"I know enough." Winnie brushed the dirt from her knees. "The ones who love you don't need the rest before they show up."
The ones who loved her. Fiona turned the phrase over as she walked back to Sea Glass Cottage.
They all gathered in the courtyard as the sun was starting to set.
Fiona watched them gather from her porch, her hands cold even in the heat.
Emily and Grant arrived first. Then Cassidy, carrying a plate of something, because of course she was.
Then Bryan, Melissa, Clint. Then Sally Morris in her store apron, like she'd come straight from the register.
Jan, even. Winnie stood in the middle of all of it, lighting the fire pit that nobody needed for warmth.
No Marty. Fiona had told herself not to look for him. She looked anyway.
She made herself walk down.
"You didn't have to feed everyone," she said to Cassidy, because it was easier than starting.
"I always feed everyone. It's a sickness." Cassidy set the plate on the low wall. "Chocolate chip cookies. With pecans. Don't make it weird."
A little laughter went around the circle. Then it faded. Then they were all just looking at her, kind and curious, waiting. All those faces in the firelight. Fiona had stood in front of crowds exactly never. F. L. Maxwell didn't do that.
But she did. At least she did now.
"Most of you already know some of this," she said. "I'd rather you heard the real version from me than the magazine version from a checkout line."
"We're not here for a confession, honey," Sally said. "You don't owe us one."
"I think I do." Fiona looked at her hands, then made herself look back up.
Looking at her hands was a coward's move, and she was done with those.
"I'm F. L. Maxwell. I write the Hank Carson mysteries.
Fifteen of them. I've been doing it for twenty years.
And I've let the whole world believe the author was a man, because that's what sold, and once it took, I never corrected it. No photo. No name. Just the books."
"I'm a little impressed, honestly," Cassidy said.
Fiona hadn't expected that. She pushed on before it could undo her.
"The other thing." She breathed in the salt air.
"I told some of you my husband was traveling.
He's not traveling. We're divorced. It went through months ago, back in the winter.
Drake left, I signed the papers, and I told nobody.
Not my agent. Not a single friend. Then I came here and told all of you he was just away for a while. "
The fire popped. Down the beach a gull complained at something.
"The man I saw on your porch the other night," Melissa said carefully.
"That was Drake. He came to tell me he'd made a mistake." Fiona shook her head. "He hadn't. He'd seen my name in the news and done the math on what it was worth. He's gone now. For good this time, on my terms."
She saw Winnie's chin lift a fraction. Approval, maybe. She held onto it.
"There's a third thing," Fiona said. "This one I want to get exactly right, because it touches all of you and the lighthouse. I won't have anybody worried I'm going to sell their lives out from under them."
"Now I'm worried," Bryan said, but he was half-smiling.
"You shouldn't be. Hear me out." She found Winnie's eyes and held them.
"When I came here I was stuck. The book I owed was dead on the page.
Then I started reading about this place.
The lighthouse. Four generations of one family keeping a light.
A blurred child in a hundred-year-old photograph.
A little seaside town that decided it would rather stay itself than get rich.
" She lifted one shoulder. "I'm a novelist. That's a story.
The story grabbed me, and I started taking notes, and I couldn't stop. "
She watched the wariness move across Winnie's face, the same wariness she'd put there once before, at the fire, the night she'd asked about the Copelands.
"I've been thinking about writing a book," Fiona said. "A new series. A lighthouse that's been in a family for generations. A small town on the water. That was the spark. This place was the spark."
"Fiona." Winnie's voice stayed even, but her thumb had found the bracelet.
"Let me finish, because here's the part that matters.
" Fiona stepped closer to her. "I would never put your family's real history on a page.
Not yours. Not anyone's. Whatever's buried out here is yours to tell or keep, and it stays yours.
Any book I write will protect the privacy of every person in this courtyard.
You have my word. I'll put it in writing if a word's not enough. "
"A word's plenty," Winnie said quietly.
"And the truth is, it's already not really about you anyway.
" Fiona almost laughed at herself. "My characters do this.
You give them a spark, and they walk off in their own direction, and they stop answering to it.
The family in my head isn't your family.
The town isn't this town. The keeper's nothing like you.
They took off the way they always do. The lighthouse just lit the match. "
For a long moment nobody said anything. Then Emily smiled.
"So we're your muses," Emily said. "That's kind of wonderful, actually."
"You're my neighbors," Fiona said. "The muse part was an accident."
That was where she could have stopped. She'd said the truth. The pen name. The divorce. The book. She could let them clap her on the shoulder, pass the cookies, and she could go back to her cottage knowing she'd been brave and truthful.
But she didn't stop. "There's one more," Fiona said.
The circle settled. Sally took a half step toward her without seeming to know she'd done it.
"I've been telling everyone I'm fine since the day I got here." Fiona looked at the fire, then made herself look at the faces. "I'm fine, just road-tired. I'm fine, just a headache. Fine, fine, fine. I have said that word to every one of you. And it was a lie every single time."
"Honey," Sally started.
"I'm not saying it for pity. Please don't." Fiona held up a hand.
"I'm saying it because I want to stop. Here's what was under the fine.
" She wrapped her arms around herself, then made herself drop them.
Hiding was hiding, even when it was just your own arms. "When Drake left, he told me why.
He said I lived more in my books than I ever lived with him.
Too closed off. Too far inside my own head, my own made-up people, for anyone to really get in. And I believed him."
She heard somebody breathe in. She kept going.
"I believed it so hard that I came to a place full of the kindest people I've ever met, and I decided in advance that none of you could possibly want to know the real me.
So I gave you a fake one. A woman whose husband was traveling.
A woman who writes 'nothing you'd know.' I was sure that if I let you see the actual person, you'd do what Drake did. Decide she wasn't worth the trouble."
"That's not—" Cassidy stopped herself. "Sorry. Keep going."
"It's all right." Fiona's mouth tugged. "You can argue with me in a minute.
I've got it coming." She let the small joke steady her.
"The thing is, I was wrong. Not about the lying.
The lying was real, and I own it. I was wrong about you.
About all of you. You kept feeding me. You kept inviting me down to this fire.
And the whole time I waited for the day you'd see through me and pull back.
That day never came. You just kept showing up. "
"Of course we did, hon." Sally smiled.
Her throat went tight. "I'm done acting like someone I'm not. That's all I came down here to say. I wanted you to know the real Fiona. She's standing right here. She's a mess, and she'd like to stay, if you'll have her."
The fire snapped. The lighthouse beam swept over them. For one terrible moment nobody moved, and the old fear had time to whisper its old line.
Then Winnie crossed the space between them and put both arms around her.
Fiona stood stiff for half a breath. Then she didn't. She put her face against Winnie's silver hair and held on. Winnie held back, strong and unhurried.
"There she is," Winnie said, low, just for her. "I've been waiting on her since the night you got here."
"You knew."
"I knew there was somebody worth waiting for." Winnie squeezed once and didn't let go. "Took you long enough to introduce us."